Evangelical wrote:

No doubt I'll be condemned for this observation, but at the very least, the reason that B'hai's are more disliked than "people of the Book" by Muslims should be fairly obvious. Jews and Christians appear, to the Muslim view, to at least be worshipping the same God, and Islam recognizes the prophets Moses and Jesus, and that they had some good things to say.

My comment:

You're too hard on yourself Evangelical.. Who is "condeming" you? The correct spelling by the way is "Baha'is" and we accept Moses, Jesus and Prophet Muhammad as Manifestations of God and we Baha'is acknowledge there is only one God.

Evangelical:

In the best possible light in Islam, then, the Jews and Christians just missed noticing the appearance of Muhammad, who is the last and greatest prophet sent by this god of all. They may be misguided, but they can surely be forgiven that.

B'hai's, on the other hand, by their belief that there was yet another prophet create a direct affront to the most central of all Muslim beliefs -- that Muhammad was the last prophet -- there will be no more.

My comment:

Muslims however believe in a Return of Christ and in the Mahdi as well as the Qa'im and it is these prophecies we Baha'is believe were fulfilled..so a true Muslim that accepts say the Return of Christ in prophecy in our belief would find it not so difficult to accept the Bab and Baha'u'llah as the fulfillment of prophecy.

Evangelical:

It would, therefore i think, be much, much more difficult for Muslims to be accepting of the B'hai faith. To accept such a faith would be tantamount to at least opening up the possibility of prophets after Muhammad, and that would be intolerable.

My comment:

Well it was not so intolerable as you may think for thousands of Muslims in the early years of the Faith to acknowledge the Bab and Baha'u'llah.. You may be interested in the history of the Baha'i Faith which I can refer you to. The issue for Baha'is though in many Muslim lands such as Egypt and Iran is one of civil liberty and the right to practise their religion which is a guarentee of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which both Egypt and Iran are signatories.

Evangelical:

(This, by the way, is another one of the many reasons that I constantly ask, and am constantly ignored, how one is to know when someone claims to have received a revelation from God, that they did in fact do so, and it isn't either a deliberate ruse or a delusion.

My comment:

I don't know that I've ignored you myself Evangelical, but in the Baha'i Faith we accept the principle of the independent investigation of truth and reality so when someone has claims we are encouraged to investigate them for ourselves...that's how we become Baha'is. So it is up to the seeker to explore and discover for themselves and you are welcome to search for yourself and reach your conclusions.

Evangelical:

Also, it is my stake in the ground that, as there is no possible way to differentiate between them -- assuming that revelations actually do occur -- then there is no possible way to assess even one's own religion as being more likely than any other. That one believes it anyway is what faith is about, but that must remain an ultimately private issue, which can have no claim on any other person, for any purpose under heaven.

My comment:

Baha'is believe all the major religions have a common Source and that each has appeared at crucial intervals in human history to uplift humanity to new plateaus of civilization... The primary challenge facing humanity today is we believe that of building a world civlization and establsihing peace on earth.

I should also state here that the primary purpose of this thread is to provide a kind of record and updating of the situation of the Baha'is in Iran.

- Art

SIX BAHA'I LEADERS ARRESTED IN IRAN; PATTERN MATCHES DEADLY SWEEPS OF
1980S

NEW YORK, 15 May 2008 (BWNS) -- Six Baha'i leaders in Iran were
arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is
ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Baha'i
leaders were summarily rounded up and killed.

The six men and women, all members of the national-level group that
helped see to the minimum needs of Baha'is in Iran, were in their homes
Wednesday morning when government intelligence agents entered and spent
up to five hours searching each home, before taking them away.

The seventh member of the national coordinating group was arrested in
early March in Mashhad after being summoned by the Ministry of
Intelligence office there on an ostensibly trivial matter.

"We protest in the strongest terms the arrests of our fellow Baha'is in
Iran," said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha'i
International Community to the United Nations. "Their only crime is their
practice of the Baha'i Faith."

"Especially disturbing is how this latest sweep recalls the wholesale
arrest or abduction of the members of two national Iranian Baha'i
governing councils in the early 1980s -- which led to the disappearance or
execution of 17 individuals," she said.

"The early morning raids on the homes of these prominent Baha'is were
well coordinated, and it is clear they represent a high-level effort to
strike again at the Baha'is and to intimidate the Iranian Baha'i
community at large," said Ms. Dugal.

Arrested yesterday were: Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin
Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr.Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr.
Vahid Tizfahm. All live in Tehran. Mrs. Kamalabadi, Mr. Khanjani, and Mr.
Tavakkoi have been previously arrested and then released after periods
ranging from five days to four months.

Arrested in Mashhad on 5 March 2008 was Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, who also
resides in Tehran. Mrs. Sabet was summoned to Mashhad by the Ministry of
Intelligence, ostensibly on the grounds that she was required to answer
questions related to the burial of an individual in the Baha'i
cemetery in that city.

On 21 August 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly
of the Baha'is of Iran were abducted and disappeared without a trace.
It is certain that they were killed.

The National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran was
reconstituted soon after that but was again ravaged by the execution of eight of
its members on 27 December 1981.

A number of members of local Baha'i governing councils, known as local
Spiritual Assemblies, were also arrested and executed in the early
1980s, before an international outcry forced the government to slow its
execution of Baha'is. Since 1979, more than 200 Baha'is have been killed
or executed in Iran, although none have been executed since 1998.

In 1983, the government outlawed all formal Baha'i administrative
institutions and the Iranian Baha'i community responded by disbanding its
National Spiritual Assembly, which is an elected governing council, along
with some 400 local level elected governing councils. Baha'is
throughout Iran also suspended nearly all of their regular organizational
activity.

The informal national-level coordinating group, known as the Friends,
was established with the knowledge of the government to help cope with
the diverse needs of Iran's 300,000-member Baha'i community, which is
the country's largest religious minority.






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Bahá'í International Community rejects Iranian allegations on recent arrests
21 May 2008
NEW YORK —

Allegations by Iran that six Bahá’ís were arrested last week “for security reasons and not for their faith” are utterly baseless and without documentation, said the Bahá’í International Community today.

“All of the allegations issued in a statement on Tuesday by the Iranian government are utterly baseless,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, referring to statements made in a press conference given yesterday in Tehran by Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham, at which he acknowledged the arrest and imprisonment of six Bahá’í leaders last week.

“The allegations are not new, and the Iranian government knows well that they are untrue,” Ms. Dugal said. “The documented plan of the Iranian government has always been to destroy the Bahá’í community, and these latest arrests represent an intensification of this plan.

“The group of Bahá’ís arrested last week, like the thousands of Bahá’ís who since 1979 have been killed, imprisoned, or otherwise oppressed, are being persecuted solely because of their religious beliefs. The best proof of this is the fact that, time and again, Bahá’ís have been offered their freedom if they recant their Bahá’í beliefs and convert to Islam – an option few have taken.

“Far from being a threat to state security, the Bahá’í community of Iran has great love for their country and they are deeply committed to its development. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that the vast majority of Bahá’ís have remained in Iran despite intense persecution, the fact that students denied access to education in Iran and forced to study abroad have returned to assist in the development of their country, and the recent effort by Bahá’ís in Shiraz to provide schooling for underprivileged children – an effort the government responded to by arresting some 54 Bahá’í participants in May 2006,” said Ms. Dugal.

In its coverage of Mr. Elham’s press conference, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that the six Bahá’ís were arrested “for security reasons not for their faith.” The IRNA report also quoted Mr. Elham as saying that the six Bahá’ís were somehow linked to “foreigners, the Zionists in particular.”

Ms. Dugal addressed that issue also, saying:

“The charges linking the Bahá’ís to Zionism are a distortion of history: The Bahá’í Faith has its world headquarters in Israel because Bahá’u’lláh was, in the mid-1800s, sent as a prisoner to the Holy Land by two Islamic countries: Ottoman Turkey and Iran.

“The charge that Bahá’ís are Zionists, which has in fact been made against Bahá’ís for the last 30 years by Iran, is nothing more than an effort by the government to stir animosity against Bahá’ís among the Iranian population at large. This is but the most recent iteration in a long history of attempts to foment hatred by casting the Bahá’ís as agents of foreign powers, whether of Russia, the United Kingdom, or the United States—and now Israel—all of which are completely baseless.

“The real issue, as it relates to Bahá’ís, who are committed to nonpartisanship and nonviolence, is the ideology of the government, which has undertaken a well-documented effort to utterly block the development of the Bahá’í community not only through arrests, harassment and imprisonment but also by depriving their youth of education and preventing adults from obtaining a livelihood.

“We would ask whether issues of state security rather than ideology were involved in recent incidents such as the destruction of a Bahá’í cemetery and the use of a bulldozer to crush the bones of a Bahá’í who was interred there; the harassment of hundreds of Bahá’í schoolchildren throughout Iran by teachers and school officials in an effort to make them reject their own religion; or the publication of dozens of defamatory anti-Bahá’í articles in Kayhan and other government-sponsored news media in recent months,” said Ms. Dugal.

She also noted that over the years, a number of government officials, clerics, and members of the judiciary have in fact made statements in private noting the nonpartisan conduct of the Bahá’í community and the unjustified nature of government charges against Bahá’ís.

She added that the present government’s ideology is based in large part on a belief that there could be no Prophet following Muhammad. The Bahá’í Faith poses a theological challenge to this belief.

“Freedom of religion is the issue and Iran itself is a signatory to international covenants that acknowledge the right of individuals to freedom of religion or belief, including the right to change one’s religion,” Ms. Dugal said.

“What the Iranian government cannot tolerate is that the Iranian people are less responsive to the government’s propaganda, because they see the reality — that Iranian Bahá’ís love their country, are sincere in their desire to contribute to its well-being, are peace-loving, and are law-abiding — and that these qualities stem from their beliefs. Consequently, there is growing sympathy for the Bahá’ís. Increasingly, people at all levels of the society are coming to their defense both privately and publicly, and there is growing interest in and attraction to the Bahá’í Faith amongst the population,” Ms. Dugal said.

IRANIAN BAHA'I LEADERS BEING HELD INCOMMUNICADO; GROWING CONCERN FOR
THEIR FATE

NEW YORK, 27 May 2008 (BWNS) -- Six Baha'i leaders who were arrested
nearly two weeks ago are being held incommunicado, without access to
lawyers or relatives, and the Baha'i International Community is
increasingly concerned about their fate.

"Although initial reports indicated they were taken to Evin prison, in
fact we don't know where they are, and we are extremely concerned,"
said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha'i International
Community to the United Nations.

"What is clear is that none of their fundamental rights are being
upheld. They have had no access to family members or counsel. We don't even
know if they have been before a judge or whether they have been
formally charged.

"All we know is what a government spokesperson said last week, which is
that they were arrested for 'security reasons,' a charge that is
utterly baseless.

"We appeal to the international community, human rights groups, and
people of conscience, as well as the news media, to continue their efforts
to press the Iranian government so that the rights of these people as
detainees be upheld and that they be allowed access to counsel and
general communication with the outside -- as a minimum step," said Ms.
Dugal.

The six, all members of the national-level group that helped see to the
minimum needs of Baha'is in Iran, were arrested on 14 May 2008 in an
early morning sweep that is ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s
when scores of Iranian Baha'i leaders were rounded up and killed.

A seventh member of the national coordinating group was arrested in
early March in Mashhad after being summoned by the Ministry of
Intelligence office there.

The whereabouts of none of the seven are known, said Ms. Dugal.

"We understood that the six were taken to Evin prison -- the seventh
remaining in Mashhad -- principally because some of the government agents
who arrested the six on the 14th had documents indicating they would
be taken to that notorious place," she said.

"However, in light of the fact that relatives have made repeated
attempts to learn more about the fate of the seven, and in all cases have
been met with evasion and conflicting stories from government officials,
we must now say that we don't know where they are -- and that our level
of concern for their fate is at the highest," Ms. Dugal said.

Arrested on 14 May were: Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin
Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr.
Vahid Tizfahm. All live in Tehran.

Arrested in Mashhad on 5 March was Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, who also resides
in Tehran. Mrs. Sabet was summoned to Mashhad by the Ministry of
Intelligence, ostensibly on the grounds that she was required to answer
questions related to the burial of an individual in the Baha'i cemetery in
that city.

Last week, Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham gave a
press conference at which he acknowledged the arrest and imprisonment of
the six. News reports quoted Mr. Elham as saying on 20 May that the six
were arrested for "security issues" and not because of their religious
beliefs.

Those assertions -- the only public statement by the government about
the seven -- were immediately rebutted by Ms. Dugal.

"The group of Baha'is arrested last week, like the thousands of Baha'is
who since 1979 have been killed, imprisoned, or otherwise oppressed,
are being persecuted solely because of their religious beliefs," Ms.
Dugal said on 21 May.





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Geneva, 2 June 2008

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has just issued an urgent press
release regarding the detained Baha'i leaders in Iran.
ICJ calls on Iranian authorities to cease harassment of Baha'i faith leaders

International Commission of Jurists

International Commission of Jurists: Immediate Press Release on Baha'is of
Iran

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has just issued an urgent press
release regarding the detained Baha'i leaders in Iran.

The ICJ is an international non-governmental organisation comprising sixty of
the world's most eminent jurists and has a worldwide network of national
sections and affiliated organisations. It is "dedicated since 1952 to the
primacy, coherence and implementation of international law and principles that
advance human rights."

The entire ICJ press release is reposted below with permission (may also be
viewed or downloaded at this link):
(PDF download here)

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE – COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
For immediate release
Geneva, 2 June 2008

ICJ calls on Iranian authorities to cease harassment of Baha’i faith leaders

"The Six leaders of the Baha'i faith in Iran, who were arbitrarily arrested in
Tehran on 14 May 2008 and are being held incommunicado, must be released
immediately or legally charged with a recognisable offence," said the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) today.

An Iranian official told a local news agency that “the six unofficial leaders
of the Baha'i faith in Iran were working against the national interest." He
added: "They are arrested for security reasons, not for their faith". However,
according to reliable information, the ICJ consider there to be sufficient
evidence to show that they may have been arrested in relation to their peaceful
activities as members of the national coordinating group of Baha'is in Iran.

The detainees, reportedly being held in the offices of the General Intelligence
Service, do not have legal representation and are not allowed to communicate
with their families. "Unless the Iranian authorities charge them with a
recognisable criminal offence and bring them before an independent and impartial
tribunal, they must be released at once," said the ICJ. "The grounds for their
detention must be immediately made public, and they must be allowed to
communicate with their lawyers and their families."

The ICJ calls on the Iranian authorities to conform with its international human
rights obligations and to ensure that these individuals are not detained on the
basis of their faith. Baha’is freedom of conscience and religion are severely
restricted, in clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), which Iran has ratified and is obliged to uphold. The
ICCPR specifically stipulates in its article 18 that "Everyone shall have the
right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include
freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom,
either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to
manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching."

The ICJ urges the Iranian authorities to also respect its Criminal Procedure
Code, which gives the arrested person the right to be promptly notified of the
reasons for their arrest or detention.

The ICJ calls upon the Iranian authorities to ensure that all the detainees are
protected from torture and other ill-treatment, and given regular access to
their families, their lawyers and any medical attention they may require.

SEVEN JAILED IRANIAN BAHA'IS MAKE BRIEF CONTACT WITH FAMILIES

NEW YORK, 19 June 2008 (BWNS) -- Seven prominent Baha'is imprisoned in Iran have each been allowed a brief phone call to their families, the Baha'i International Community has learned.

The calls were the first contact with the jailed Baha'is since six of them were arrested on 14 May in pre-dawn raids at their homes in Tehran. The seventh was arrested in March in the city of Mashhad.

The Baha'i International Community has learned that on 3 June, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet and Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi were permitted to make short phone calls to their families. Mrs. Sabet had been detained in Mashhad on 5 March but on 26 May was transferred to Evin Prison in Tehran, where it is believed the others are also being held.

Later it was confirmed that Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm also have made brief phone calls to their families.

No charges have been filed against any of the seven, who comprise the entire membership of a coordinating committee that saw to the minimal needs of the 300,000-member Baha'i community of Iran.

In 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran were taken away and presumed killed as they were never heard from again. A year later, after the Assembly had been reconstituted, eight of the nine members were arrested and killed.

Besides the seven committee members imprisoned in Tehran, about 15 other Baha'is are currently detained in Iran, some incommunicado and most with no formal charges.






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-

Baha'i protest
Marj Belessis

21 June 2008


Cover story
SYDNEY film-maker Mehrzad Mumtahan, a fifth-generation Baha'i, felt the scourge of religious persecution as a child living in Iran through the Islamic revolution of 1979.

The recent arrest of his uncle, along with other Baha'i leaders in Iran, is the latest bitter reminder that, almost 30 years later, the oppression continues.

Mehrzad and relatives of other leaders in detention will speak of their concerns for the safety of their loved ones at a National Refugee Week gathering at the Baha'i national centre at Ingleside tomorrow.

``I have vivid memories of persecution,'' he told The Manly Daily. ``We had to run away from our house in our pyjamas, other people looted the house and took everything away. As a child you lose things you are attached to ...

``We didn't have any accommodation we'd spend a night here, a week there. Dad bought six blankets and we stayed wherever we could, sometimes with another five families.''
Mehrzad was 10 when the revolution came, and although the Baha'is had experienced persecution under the rule of the former Shah of Iran, the oppression continued with a vengeance under the fundamentalist regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The rights of Iran's 300,000-strong Baha'i community to worship the way they wished, to be educated and to work were systematically stripped.

In August, 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran were abducted and disappeared without a trace. The assembly was reconstituted soon afterwards but was again ravaged when eight of its members were executed the following year.

Since 1979 it is estimated that more than 200 Baha'is have been killed or executed in Iran, although none have been executed since 1998.

When Mehrzad was 17, he and his 19-year-old brother decided to leave Iran.

``I had been expelled from school, we were suffering very severe persecution at the time, we couldn't work, we had no passports. I wanted to get an education,'' he said.

``We were smuggled across the border into Pakistan, dressed as Pakistanis, as part of a group of 14 people of all faiths and different parts of Iranian society.

``We spent a year in Pakistan, and the Australian Government very kindly offered us to come to Australia as refugees. We arrived in Adelaide in 1987.

``The rest of my immediate family my mother and two younger sisters, arrived as refugees three years later.''
Mehrzad said in that three years, his parents had been arrested by the revolutionary guards and their assets confiscated. His father had a brain tumour and was confined to a wheelchair.

``When my father died, my family were left with no house, no business, nothing. The best option was for them to leave. They were smuggled out of Iran, too, although they had a much harder time than my brother and I.

``We had been driven out they had to ride on horseback through the mountains into Turkey.''

In Adelaide, Mehrzad completed his bachelor of visual arts degree in film and electronic media-design at the University of South Australia, and later gained a master's degree in art and design education from the University of NSW. He has also studied at the Buffalo State College in New York.

Since moving to Sydney in 2000, he has produced short films and videos mainly for educational purposes, exhibited his ceramic works and taught visual communication at Sydney's School of Visual Arts and figure clay modelling at the Mosman College.

Five years ago he founded the Harmony Film Festival, a non-profit venture established to create a platform for professional and emerging film-makers to discuss social issues that are important and relevant in today's world.

The dedicated volunteers running the festival also hold annual film camps where industry professionals conduct film-making workshops and travel to remote communities to provide training in film and video for Aboriginal teenagers.
Mehrzad and his Indian wife, Sunitha, whom he met while working in Hong Kong and married three years ago at Cottage Point in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, have a three-month-old son.

They have named him Cyrus, after the great Persian king who, more than 2500 years ago, created mankind's first charter of human rights. As good as life in Australia has been to Mehrzad, the plight of his extended family and his fellow Baha'is in Iran is never far from his mind.

``A year ago, two of my cousins, aged 16 and 17, were among 54 young people arrested in the city of Shiraz and accused of crimes against the national security for no reason other than that they were working in under-privileged areas with things like helping children with their schoolwork,'' he said. ``They were released from jail after five days and given a one-year suspended sentence on condition that they attend fortnightly `Islamic guidance' classes.''

The disappearance of his uncle, Saeid Rezaie, and the six other members of the Baha'is co-ordinating committee since their arrest is a further reminder of the ongoing nightmare of religious persecution in Iran.

``We are extremely concerned about my uncle and the other members of the the group,'' Mehrzad said. ``Their families were told they were taken to Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, but attempts to make contact with them have been fruitless. All they get are denials from the prison authorities that they were ever taken there.

``It is time for the rest of the world to bear witness to what is happening in Iran, and to raise their voices to put an end to the persecution,'' he said.

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NOBEL LAUREATES CALL FOR RELEASE OF IRANIAN BAHA'I PRISONERS

NEW YORK, 30 June 2008 (BWNS) -- Six Nobel Peace Prize laureates have issued a statement calling on the Iranian government to free immediately seven prominent Iranian Baha'is imprisoned in Tehran.

The six Nobel winners, under the banner of the Nobel Women's Initiative, called on the Iranian government to guarantee the safety of the Baha'is -- being held in Evin Prison with no formal charges and no access to lawyers -- and to grant them an unconditional release.

"We are thankful to these internationally prominent activists for calling publicly for the release of our fellow Baha'is, who are detained for no reason other than their religion," said Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations.

The Nobel laureates supporting the statement are:
-- Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, founders of the Peace People in Northern Ireland and winners of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976;
-- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, a leading advocate of ethno-cultural reconciliation in her native Guatemala and Nobel winner in 1992;
-- Professor Jody Williams, international campaigner for the banning of land mines, winner in 1997;
-- Iranian human rights lawyer Dr. Shirin Ebadi, winner in 2003;
-- Kenyan environmental activist Professor Wangari Muta Maathai, Nobel winner in 2004.

Their statement, issued on the letterhead of the Nobel Women's Initiative, reads:

"We note with concern the news of the arrest of six prominent Baha'is in Iran on 14 May 2008. We note that Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm are members of the informal group known as the Friends in Iran that coordinates the activities of the Baha'i community in Iran; we further note that another member of the Friends in Iran, Mrs Mahvash Sabet, has been held in custody since 5 March 2008; we register our deepest concern at the mounting threats and persecution of the Iranian Baha'i community.

"We call on the Iranian Government to guarantee the safety of these individuals (and) grant their immediate unconditional release."

The Nobel Women's Initiative was established in 2006 by the six women laureates - representing North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa - to contribute to building peace by working together with women around the world. Only 12 women have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Women's Initiative maintains an office in Ottawa, Canada.





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ARSONISTS IN IRAN TARGET BAHA'I HOMES, VEHICLES

NEW YORK, 28 July 2008 (BWNS) -- Acts of arson targeting homes and vehicles are the latest violent tactics directed against the Baha'is of Iran.

"In the early hours of the morning of 18 July, the house of the Shaaker family in Kerman went up in flames, only weeks after their car had been torched and in the wake of a series of threatening phone calls," said Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations.

"As would be expected in the light of the mistreatment Baha'is in Iran are routinely receiving, the officials who investigated the fire either ignored or dismissed obvious signs of suspicious activity, including a muffled explosion, simply saying that it was the result of an electrical problem," she said.

At least a dozen cases of arson that target Baha'is have been reported in Iran in the last 15 months, Ms. Dugal said. She gave the following examples:

-- On 15 July at 1:15 a.m., Molotov cocktails were thrown into the front courtyard of the home of Khusraw Dehghani and his wife, Dr. Huma Agahi, in Vilashahr, only months after anonymous threats directly related to her being a Baha'i forced Dr. Agahi to close her clinic in nearby Najafabad where she had practiced medicine for 28 years.

-- On 25 July, the car of a prominent Baha'i in Rafsanjan, in Kerman province, was torched and destroyed by arsonists on motorbikes. Soheil Naeimi, the owner of the car, and 10 other Baha'i families in the town had received threatening letters from a group calling itself the Anti-Baha'ism Movement of the Youth of Rafsanjan that, among other things, threatened jihad (holy war) against the Baha'is.

-- On 10 June, an outbuilding on the property of the Mr. and Mrs. Mousavi, elderly Baha'is living in the village of Tangriz in Fars province, was destroyed by fire when it was doused with gasoline. The Mousavis, along with their two sons who were sleeping close to the building, narrowly escaped injury when the gasoline tank used to start the fire exploded. The Mousavis believe that the perpetrator thought they were all sleeping in the hut when he set the fire. Mr. Mousavi issued a formal complaint against the person they suspected, but the legal office has declined to pursue the case because the suspect swore on the Qur'an that he was not guilty. Out of respect for the Qur'an, the Mousavis have dropped the charges.

-- On 4 April, the home of a Baha'i was set on fire in Babolsar, in the north of Iran.

-- In February in Shiraz, a 53-year-old businessman was attacked on the street, chained to a tree, doused with gasoline, and assaulted by unknown persons who then attempted to throw lighted matches at him.

-- Also in Shiraz in February, several arson attempts were made against vehicles and a home belonging to Baha'is.

-- On 1 May 2007, arson destroyed the home of 'Abdu'l-Baqi Rouhani in the village of Ivil, in Mazandaran.

-- In Karaj, the burial section of a Baha'i cemetery was set on fire.

"These latest attacks follow the authorities' attempts to deprive the Iranian Baha'i community of its leadership," Ms. Dugal said, referring to the arrests in March and May this year of the seven members of Iran's national Baha'i coordinating group, all of whom are still locked up in Evin Prison in Tehran without any charges and without access to an attorney or to their families.

"As Baha'is worldwide watch with alarm this escalation in violence," she added, "their fears that a sinister plan of persecution is unfolding become increasingly confirmed. Their only hope is that enough voices of protests are raised around the world to compel the government in Iran to put an end to this violence."


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Bahá'Ã* World News Service - Bahá'Ã* International Community

Congressman Kirk presenting resolution 1008 to the US House of Representatives on condemning the persecution of Bahia's in Iran:

YouTube - Persecution of Baha'is in Iran "Crime of the Century"